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February Blessing Journal Devotion Change My Heart O God
Change my heart O God, make it ever true. I tell you that One greater than the temple is here. If you had known what these words mean, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice” you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. [Matthew 12: 6-8]
When you read Matthew 12: 6-8 in Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, "There is far more at stake here than religion. If you had any idea what this Scripture meant—'I prefer a flexible heart to an inflexible ritual'—you wouldn't be nitpicking like this. The Son of Man is no lackey to the Sabbath; he's in charge." you can see that the Jesus is annoyed that the Pharisees are giving more importance to the petty regulations of man than to God’s commandments. Jesus challenged and confronted the Pharisees. His disciples were doing what would have been perfectly proper on any weekday. They were not stealing from this farmer as they went through his grain fields, for the law said that as long as they did not put a sickle or a scythe to the grain, any passing travelers who were hungry could thresh out a few heads of grain in their hands and eat the wheat. The problem was that this was the Sabbath, and by this time the Sabbath had a thousand and one restrictions built into it by the Pharisees. The Sabbath originally was given to restore man, and properly observed, it would be a joy. But the Pharisees, the establishment of the day, with their thousands of interpretations of what it meant to cease work had made it a terrible burden to bear. For instance, they held that it was perfectly all right to spit on a rock on the Sabbath -- that presented no problem. But if you spit on the ground, that made mud; mud was mortar; therefore you were working on the Sabbath. So it was absolutely wrong to spit on the ground! Churches and Christians are notorious for this kind of thinking: new music in worship, new people in the pews with new ideas, different ideas for outreach – all of these might confront some long-held tradition that has more to do with ritual and very little to do with the spreading the Gospel. It is easy to focus on a single or different act and say, "We never did it that way before." Are you digging your heels in over something trivial in your life, family, church or work? Jesus needs flexible hearts to do His work and bring His light to the world. -c anderson Click Here for a Printable February Blessing Journal Page
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